Well, all that debate was gone forever, and he was ecstatic to be the one to prove it. If he’d crashed, the scheme would have been canceled, and Petronius would have gotten his old tub back.
Adam grinned, not today, dear sir, not today.
A mile aft of the Shiloh he began his slow banking turn. Nothing fancy, though he knew he could put the Falcon up on its wing and still maintain control. The Falcon was the first aerosteamer ever to be rolled and looped, at least deliberately, and still hold together, but for today, it was slow, gentle, and steady flying.
He came out of his turn at two hundred feet and lined up straight on the landing deck. He felt a momentary ripple of fear. The damned thing looked so impossibly small, just three hundred fifty feet long and thirty-five wide. He was glad he was trying this first with a Falcon rather than a Goliath. With its fifty-foot wing span, a pilot would have to land off center to the port side in order to avoid clipping the bridge.
Concentrate!.. he screamed at himself. This wasn’t quite as easy as he had boasted it would be. Lining up on the fantail of the ship, he closed in. Then he watched his target slip ahead. He’d forgotten for a second that the place where he wanted to land was steadily moving forward at over twenty feet a second.
He raised his nose slightly, edged in another hundred RPMs, saw that he was coming in a bit high, and dropped the RPMs back down again. Right hand on the throttle, he gripped the control stick tightly. One of the things he liked about the new Falcon was that just before stalling there’d be a slight shudder on the stick from the airflow breaking up over the wings.
He edged the nose higher, the plane dropping as it lost flying speed. Watching from the comer of his eye, he saw the creamy wake rolling away from the ship, then the edge of the landing deck. He cut the throttle back, felt the shudder on the stick. The metal wheels hit the deck with a clattering shriek. Panic flashed through him as the nose dropped. It seemed that he was racing straight at the bridge. Then, with a snap, he was jerked to a stop. The tail hook had snagged the cables laid across the deck, which were weighted down with sandbags.
He chopped the throttle back completely. As he pulled off his helmet and goggles, he was suddenly aware that he was sweating profusely.
He unstrapped the safety harness, stood up, climbed out of the cockpit, and dropped to the deck. Instantly he was surrounded by a shouting, joyous mob-engineers from the design team, Theodor leading the way, Quintus and the launch crew swarming in around him. He caught a glimpse of the admiral up on the bridge, who, though looking a bit glum, formally saluted.
“What do the Yankees say?” Adam laughed. “A piece of cake. Now let’s try the Goliath.”
He tried to walk, but suddenly his knees felt like jelly, and he had to sit down. The crowd around him broke into appreciative laughs.
Theodor shooed them back and took a seat beside him. “How does it feel to be the first man to take off and land on an aerosteamer carrier?”
“A what?”
“That’s what we’re calling them. Aerosteamer carriers.” Adam smiled, afraid to speak, the sudden surge of fear still holding him. So much could have gone wrong. He should have simply fallen over the edge of the deck and then drowned. He could have come in too high and slammed into the bridge, or too low and crashed against the fantail. What sounded so easy in late-night arguments, or when first tested only a week ago on a regular landing strip, now seemed little short of insane.
“Scared?” Theodor asked.
Adam smiled, shook his head, then, looking into Theodor’s eyes, he slowly nodded in agreement.
“I was petrified every time I went up,” Theodor said. “Flew eighty-two missions during the war and afterward and near peed myself on every one. In fact, if I remember correctly, I did pee myself when we started to burn and crashed at Hispania. Nothing to be ashamed of.”
“It’s not as easy as we boasted it would be,” Adam whispered.
“I know, I could see that. If we don’t have fifteen or more knots of wind, it’ll damn near be suicide unless we get those catapults in place.”
Theodor sighed.
“The president wants these three ships ready to sail within the week. We’ve got to train sixty pilots to do this, and then”-he hesitated-“and then fly straight into their fleet and attack.”
He looked back at Adam.
“We’ll bring the Goliath up from below. Do you feel up to trying it, or should we call it a day?”
Adam smiled. “No problem. Let’s get it done.”
Theodor clapped him on the shoulder. “Take a break, son. It’ll be a half an hour or more before we have it topside and ready to fly.”
Adam refused Theodor’s help as he stood up and walked toward the bridge. He smiled again as dozens of men surrounded him, shouting congratulations and slapping him on the back. He waved good-naturedly, a bit of a swagger in his walk, reached the edge of the wooden top deck, found a ladder, and scrambled down to the main deck below.
What had once been intended as the main deck upon which the superstructure, turrets, and mounts for the three masts were to be placed had been covered over with yet more planking. The flight deck, twenty feet above, ran the entire length of the ship, vertical support beams to hold the deck hastily bolted into place. What was now the lower deck acted as the storage and maintenance deck, which would be filled with aerosteamers, their munitions, and supplies. It was presently occupied by a lone, Goliath twin-engine plane, wings folded in, rudder detached.
A steam whistle sounded, the alert signal that the ramp was about to be lowered. The deck overhead just forward of the fantail suddenly opened, powered by half a hundred men on pulleys. The hinged deck ponderously dropped down to form a ramp to the lower main deck.
A crew scrambled around the Goliath, hooking a hoist cable to the nose. Topside, fifty men began to pull, and ever so slowly the ungainly-looking aerosteamer rolled up the thirty-degree incline, crew chiefs shouting orders.
As Adam watched, the entire show seemed somehow unreal-and also far too slow. It might work here, on the calm Inland Sea, with no enemy in sight, but a better way would have to be found. A ship would have to be designed from the keel up for this job. But for now this was all they had, and in thirty minutes he was going to have to fly that thing, bring it back, and land it.
Turning, he rushed to the railing, leaned over, and vomited.
It all seemed like a dream.
Sean O’Donald stood on the foredeck of Ulgana, the Kazan ship of the line named after the third keeper of the underworld. Looking aft, he was awed by the sight, the sense of power the ship conveyed. Its three forward turrets, each carrying a massive ten-inch gun, barrels raised to maximum elevation, were pointing broadside to starboard in salute as they passed the emperor. The entire starboard railing, from bow to stern, was lined with the crew, clenched fists raised in salute.
His view of the emperor’s flagship was blocked by the massive bulk of the Kazan sailors, and he turned away, attention turning to the harbor. Over a hundred transport ships filled the great bay. Since the day before yesterday, five umens-of the Shiv, three legions of imperial troops, a full division of land cruisers, and another of heavy artillery had been loading up, and the ships were starting to weigh anchor, ready to fall in astern of the main battle line, comprised of eight main battleships like Ulgana, a dozen heavy cruisers, and more than twenty frigates.
Even the lightest frigate would be a match for anything the Republic could put to sea, and that realization chilled what little doubt still lingered in his heart.
Am I really a traitor as Cromwell said? he wondered.